The French interior minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, said police carried out 128 raids on Tuesday morning, but gave no further details. The police are now seeking Abaaoud. One said the woman, Hasna Aitboulahcen, is believed to have detonated a suicide vest Wednesday in the building after a brief conversation with police officers. A major police operation was underway there Monday. Eight people were arrested in the raid. Another, Rafaello Pantucci of London’s Royal United Services Institute, said: “The networks between France and Belgium have been very tight for a few time”. Abdeslam was identified as the suspected driver of the rental auto that brought the assailants to the rock concert where the most people were killed in Friday’s attacks.
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“Terrorism hit France not because of what it is doing in Iraq and Syria… but for what it is”, Valls told lawmakers.
Two people in Belgium have been charged with participating and preparing terrorist attacks in connection to Friday’s terrorist assault in Paris, Belgian officials have confirmed.
Belgian media are reporting police searches in Brussels and at least one arrest connected to the Paris attacks.
Investigators said they also suspected a Belgian man could have supplied Amedy Coulibaly, the gunman behind a Jewish supermarket attack also in Paris in January, with his weapons.
– In Belgium, where numerous Paris attackers lived, Prime Minister Charles Michel announced a package of additional anti-terror measures, and said 400 million euros ($427 million) would be earmarked to expand the fight. “There have been several arrests”, Michel told RTL television.
The Paris attack suspect mastermind is also suspected of aiding in the organization and financing of a terror cell in Verviers that was broken up in a police raid January 15.
In Brussels, police have detained two suspects. “But if all the countries in the world aren’t capable of fighting against 30,000 people (IS members), it’s incomprehensible”.
-He is known to be fighting alongside the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria after he appeared in the group’s video. Speaking after the seven-hour siege in Saint-Denis, Hollande said that France was “at war” with the Islamic State group.
An undated image made available in the Islamic State’s English-language magazine, Dabiq, shows Abdelhamid Abaaoud. Salah rented the Volkswagen Polo which was parked outside the Bataclan concert hall, where 89 people were murdered during an Eagles of Death Metal concert.
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Proportional to its 11 million population, of whom half a million are Muslim, Belgium has been the European country which has contributed the most foreign fighters to the civil war in Syria – over 300 by official estimates a year ago – and it has figured in many Islamist attacks and plots across the continent. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly.
